On February 23rd, WORD is joining the ANSWER Coalition and other organizations to Stop the Cops! The February 23rd Coalition—made up of Black, immigrant, women’s, LGBT, student and other organizations—has formed to call for a Unity March to Stop the Cops. This February we will recognize the one-year anniversary of the killing of Ramarley Graham in the Bronx, and Trayvon Martin in Florida, not in silence, but in action.

WORD NYC is joining the February 23rd Unity March because Stop and Frisk is a racist tactic used against communities of color. Of the hundreds of thousands of unwarranted stops under this policy, only 0.13 percent of people stopped are found to have weapons.

Stop and Frisk is also a sexist policy. While women make up a small percentage of those stopped and frisked, our stories need to be told. Women in New York City often feel degraded and physically violated by this tactic. We are harassed and intimidated daily by cops. We have nowhere to turn when a problem does arise. Over half of all rapes go unreported, some of which is due to valid skepticism and mistrust of the cops, who often mistreat women. Trans women are frequently targets of police harassment and intimidation. A study in Jackson Heights found that LGBTQ people were stopped and frisked at nearly double the rate of non-LGBTQ people, and the rate was highest among transgender people in particular.

Women are also going to jail in increasing numbers. The number of women in prison has increased at nearly double the rate of men since 1980, with Black women being incarcerated at four times the rate of white women. In 2007, 84 percent of women sent to New York’s prisons were convicted of non-violent offenses. These women, once incarcerated for non-violent offenses, often face sexual harassment and abuse at the hands of corrections officers.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) divides families through the detention and deportation of immigrants. Some immigrant women are forced to choose between staying in an abusive relationship or being deported if they report their abuser. Unable to have a marriage recognized at the federal level due to DOMA, lesbian immigrant women also face deportation.

The state has often tacitly condoned the violence against queer and trans women, as the cases of the New Jersey 7 and CeCe McDonald have shown. In New York City, during the Brooklyn Bridge arrests where over 700 Occupy protesters were trapped by the NYPD, a transman was detained, humiliated and segregated from the rest of the protesters. A few months later, a transwoman was arrested by cops and was handcuffed with her hand raised in the air for 28 hours while being harassed and humiliated.

While funding to social programs is being slashed left and right, the NYPD has an annual operating budget of $4.6 billion. It is clear that this money is not being used to protect and serve, but rather to harass, intimidate, brutalize, and kill New York City residents.

We need to stop the cops by shutting down the Rose M. Singer Center and Rikers, and ending the growing incarceration of women everywhere! We need to stop the cops from deporting immigrant women and their children! We need to stop the cops from harassing and sexually assaulting women!

As the Call to Action for the Stop the Cops Unity March says, "On Feb. 23, we take a significant step forward in building that movement against the real criminals: the NYPD and their bosses on Wall Street. We are for a world where our communities are organized and empowered, reclaiming and patrolling our own blocks, and where inequality, oppression and poverty—the foundations of community 'crime'—are finally uprooted."

Join WORD in standing shoulder to shoulder with our allies in the ANSWER Coalition and the February 23rd Coalition to STOP THE COPS!

WORD (Women Organized to Resist and Defend) is a new grassroots, feminist organization that is dedicated to building the struggle for women’s rights and equality for all. Learn more at DefendWomensRights.org.